


They Didn't Tell Us What We're Up Against (I Just Want You Up Against Me)

by stardustedknuckles



Series: Beauyasha College AU [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: College AU, Discussions of Asexuality, F/F, Gen, yasha and caleb should be friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26782903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: Caleb's not expecting it when his best friend's girlfriend shows up to ask him a personal question. And he's definitely not expecting to make a friend of his own.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Caleb Widogast & Yasha, beauyashter if you squint
Series: Beauyasha College AU [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024825
Comments: 16
Kudos: 202





	They Didn't Tell Us What We're Up Against (I Just Want You Up Against Me)

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Ah yeah I try to avoid just outright discussions of sexuality in fics, you know - kinda feels like reading an after-school special  
> Also me: I didn't know what (insert terminology here) was or that it existed until I was 19  
> Me: Also it's best not to just put therapy directly into conversation, kinda takes you out of it.  
> Also me, 27: what do you mean you can just use your words to say things you feel
> 
> In short: here is a cute story that also features sections in which the characters maybe feel like they are talking for your benefit. I love them, your honor.

On Thursdays, the first floor of the library belonged to Caleb. It was party night, given that so many of the campus residents visited home on the weekends, and that meant plentiful spots to choose from. The third floor was nice now and then, but the uncanny level of quiet only served to make the shuffling of feet on the floor or a paper swishing as it turned that much louder - and silence, for Caleb, was its own kind of sound.

For reasons he would never understand, the second floor was where everyone went to make out.

So it was Thursday, and he was here, and the drifting, misty rain through the floor-to-ceiling windows across from the curved yellow booth set a kind of atmosphere that never failed to make him feel cocooned within the general hubbub of the students surrounding him.

By his second year, there had been an unspoken understanding that this was his Thursday spot. That meant his friends knew where to find him, and often did. Even Molly was known to charm his way onto campus despite having dropped out after his first semester and despite being widely recognizable. So when he felt someone approach his space and stand quietly almost at his elbow, he held up a finger and finished the equation he was working on before looking up.

He blinked. It was Yasha, waving with a few fingers down by her waist and looking unsure of herself. That wasn't unusual, but Beauregard was nowhere to be seen. And that was. "Hallo," he said uncertainly.

"Hey," Yasha replied quietly. "I know you're usually here, I hope it's alright that I'm dropping by?"

Caleb set his pencil down and gestured to the semicircle bench. It was just him at the table, though it was meant for about six people, but that's why he came here at this time: when the library was quieter, he did not feel so bad taking up a large surface area. The spare room for his friends to join him was a welcome bonus.

Yasha, however, was not someone Caleb was certain he could count as a friend, mostly because she was always with Beauregard, and being with Beauregard was a lot like being with Molly -- the other person simply didn't get to say a whole lot (usually by design).

"Is there something I can help you with?" Caleb immediately winced at the formality of his words. "I do not mean you can't just have a seat if you like. It is just…unexpected to see you here alone."

"No no, don't worry," Yasha said. "I didn't take it that way. I just…I know that you have done a lot of research…" she trailed off uncertainly.

Caleb felt his interest piqued. "On many subjects," he acknowledged. "I will need slightly more specificity." This time he smiled just a little to let Yasha know he was teasing. She had an air about her of something like a skittish cat sometimes, a feeling he knew very well and did not wish to aggravate.

Yasha smiled nervously back, fingering the buttons on the sleeves of her flannel. "Of course. I just…I wondered what you might know about asexuality."

Ah. He had been expecting something like that, though perhaps not that exact term. Yasha was very shy, but shyness did not always translate to an unwillingness for sex. And Caleb had seen Beau's bruises. Many times. Constantly.

Begrudgingly.

"I know you helped Fjord with a lot of his research," Yasha continued, "so I thought maybe you might be the person to ask. I know we don't know each other well, so it's perfectly alright if you--"

"Nein," Caleb interrupted gently. "It was a project I found most interesting and a subject I certainly don't mind discussing. Can you tell me more?"

Yasha smiled gratefully at him and returned her eyes to her sleeve. This suited him just fine; Caleb also avoided eye contact when he could get away with it. "I'm…not actually sure how explain," Yasha began. "I don't even know if asexuality is the right word. I had just never heard of it before Fjord's project and it sounds like the closest thing to what I'm…" she trailed off again, embarrassed.

Caleb pulled a gently used composition book from the stack, labeled "Year three, volume 4." He flipped quickly past the mixture of handwriting within -- mostly his, but with flashes of Fjord's leaning, angular script, Veth's near-illegible scrawl, and Jester's silver and gold gel pen dicks. He found the first fresh page, selected a pen, and slid both to Yasha. "If this helps," he said.

Yasha paused, then nodded and began to write.

"I am afraid Beau thinks I don't want to be close to her. I like having sex with her but I don't like her doing it to me." She pushed the book back towards Caleb, who set his coffee cup back down to examine it.

Something clicked into place for Caleb. "Ah." For all of Beau's posturing and delight in showing off the marks Yasha left on her, she wasn't one to spill about anyone else. He had noticed some kind of tension underlying Beau's boasts, but had been unable to identify it. This, however, made sense.

He wrote, "Beau has very direct ways of showing affection. I can understand why this would be a concern for you. Have you talked about it?"

Yasha read over it and nodded, scribbled. "She knows it isn't anything she's doing. It just doesn't work the same for me. It's much more fun for me to do things for her."

She watched Caleb as he read over it. When he adjusted the book to begin writing back, she spoke up. "I think I can talk about it out loud now." She nodded at the book. "Thank you for that."

"Of course." Caleb closed the composition book and set it aside. "I am sure you know that I frequently find it difficult to speak. These books are a most valuable tool." He took a sip of his coffee and cleared his throat. "I am assuming that you don't believe it to be anything mental, if you are opening with asexuality," he continued. "You think there is ah…more of an attraction factor at play here?"

Yasha pulled her legs up onto the bench and crossed them, looking pensive. "A year ago I might have thought maybe it was because I didn't think I deserved nice thing or something like that," she said. "And it's true that sometimes I can still get that way, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm with Beau, you know, I…I love making her feel good, and I am good at it."

"But if you had an option you would just as soon play Mario Kart?" Those had been Fjord's words when he explained, which Caleb found a little funny since Fjord was notoriously awful at any game that involved steering.

Yasha shook her head quickly. "No, I absolutely want to do those things to her, as often as she likes. It is one of my favorite ways to spend an evening. Also I am bad at video games." An evening, Caleb thought, or a weekend.

Yasha pushed ahead quickly. "I just wondered if maybe you knew a word for someone who's definitely attracted to their partner but doesn't get anything out of their partner being attracted to them, you know? I've let her…" she made a rolling motion with her hand, "but I know I don't react the way she wants me to and I feel bad because it's like you said, she shows affection in very direct ways and that’s a big one for her. Pretending would be wrong and I'm bad at it anyways, but." She frowned at her sleeve. "I know she doesn't feel like she's able to give anything back to me and I don't know how to tell her in words she'll understand that it's not about whether or not she touches me back."

Caleb's index finger tapped thoughtfully on his coffee cup, which he had forgotten he was still holding. "Can you tell me more about what you do get?" he asked. "What is it you enjoy from it? Do feel free to go light on the details," he added quickly. "She is like my sister." Yasha smiled, and Caleb was surprised, again - perpetually - at how easily his returning expression came. He'd smiled much more easily since he transferred.

"Of course," Yasha said. "I guess for me it's like…well, you've met Beau, you know how she is."

Caleb nodded uncertainly. "In selected ways."

"Well yes, obviously our relationship has key differences. But you've seen her, right? She's loud, she's bright, she takes up a room, she's so arrogant but in a way that doesn't make anyone else feel small to see it." Caleb had never seen Yasha so excited to talk about anything -- or to talk at all. It made him feel a little warm to see this shy person come alive talking about his best friend.

And it disturbed something in the back of his mind that felt a lot like shame. He acknowledged it and set it aside for the moment. "I know what you mean," he said fondly.

They shared a moment of mutual appreciation for Beau before Yasha picked up again. "I don't know if I can explain, like. To you or to her or to anyone -- what it's like that she trusts me to sort of…put all that on hold. To have a kind of power over her that really means something to her, that she trusts me with all of it. It's," she searched hard for a word and sighed frustratedly. "I don't know how to tell her that's all I need and more," she finished. "I know for most people that's part of the experience but not all of it. But for me it is. I genuinely get everything I need just knowing that I can be that for her." She peered at him. "Does that make any sense?"

"Yasha," he said, "this is off topic, but I feel I owe you an apology."

She tilted her head, puzzled. "Because you don’t know the answer?"

"No, no, nothing like that," he said, waving a hand. "I mean I don't know the answer, not yet, but I am afraid my train of thought has led me to a different place. I am just realizing that I have never spoken to you before without Beau here."

He watched her consider, putting pieces together as best she could. "I don't go many places without Beau," she said. "She is much better at the…peopling than I am, and I have come to rely on her as a kind of buffer. So that is not your fault."

Caleb managed to keep from laughing. "That is also unrelated. More of a context for where my head is right now." He scratched the back of his neck. "I just did not understand what was different about you," he said. "I am certain that Beau has told you at least a little of what her life was like in the year before you transferred here?"

"A little," she replied. "And it isn't hard to put together a lot of the rest. She said she stayed with you and Veth's family for a while, before she got the job at the library."

He nodded. "Partially true. She stayed with us a couple nights a week, and the rest of the time she found couches of friends and…people who weren't friends but she knew she could win in a fight against."

He watched Yasha absorb his words and add them to what she already knew. "I could tell she wanted to stay the night at my apartment from the first time she came over," she said thoughtfully. At Caleb's face, she elaborated. "She would always find a reason to leave at the end of the night unless she was literally too tired to go anywhere. I thought for a long time that I had it wrong and she didn't want to stay at all but had no choice."

"Ah," Caleb said. "But you realize now how hard it is for her to feel as though she intrudes on anyone. Was," he corrected himself. "She has done great work in overcoming that." they shared a small smile of affection for Beau. "I hope you will forgive me," Caleb continued. "It is just that when she told us you were her new girlfriend, we by then had an idea of what that usually meant for her."

"Oh. I see." Yasha's eyes dropped. Caleb instantly understood that he had unknowingly tripped over something that bothered her greatly.

He leaned forward and gently, slowly, placed three fingertips on her flannel sleeve. "You were different from the start," he insisted. "I did not tell you this to hurt you, though I can see that I have and I am very sorry. Again." Yasha's eyes were faraway, but they came back to him just enough to encourage him to keep talking. "She talked about you so differently from anyone else," he said.

And it was truer than he could say. He remembered the long texts, uncharacteristic for Beau, the pictures she'd sent of the pallet of blankets Yasha had set up for her and of her at a table with real food visible off to the side. "We all knew that you were taking excellent care of her." Yasha looked fully at him. "We were just concerned about why." It sounded so misguided now, looking at her. It was true that Yasha didn't engage much in the conversations that happened around her and Beau, but he had been a fool to mistake her introversion for hiding something. Caduceus would call it projecting.

Unfortunately, he would probably also be right.

Yasha looked at his hand on hers, but didn't move away. "So talking to me made you understand better?"

He nodded emphatically. "I am a man prone to suspicion and fiercely protective of the few friends I have managed to scrape together in this life. In turn, Veth is incredibly protective of me and mine. But I am afraid that kind of thinking can become too familiar after a while, ja? It creeps in and makes judgment flawed. I am sorry to have misjudged you."

He saw the tension run out of Yasha's shoulders, and she turned her wrist so that his hand was lightly in hers. "Well." She smiled. "I knew you were great before I ever met you."

"Now you are rubbing it in." He was smiling too now as he said it.

"You are friends with Beau. You can take it."

He laughed at that, released her hand and took another drink of his coffee, leaning back against the seat with a chuckle. "So." He wiped his mouth and clapped his hands once. "Back to business. You described very well to me what you feel when you are with her. Have you…told her this? In those exact words?"

Yasha frowned, thinking. "I think so. I tell her often that I am happiest with her and don't need affection shown in the same way. I just like being around her."

Caleb nodded, considering. "She has…told you about her father as well? Her family growing up?" By the way Yasha's face clouded, it seemed she was very well informed. "Ja," he said quietly. "I think our Beauregard has done some amazing work on herself in the last two years since we've known her. All of us have grown in our various ways. But I know that she has struggled, in her darker moments, with the concept of usefulness."

Yasha nodded slowly. She knew, of course. She had been there to see some of the same breakdowns Beau had, the anxiety taking over her brilliant mind and telling her she was not good enough for her friends. "You think she feels useless because she can't make me feel as good?" Yasha asked quietly.

Caleb held up a hand. "Not quite so much," he said. "I…it's difficult for me to make emotions into words, I think." His phone lit up from its perch on the table; Caleb glanced at the cracked screen and smiled, looking past Yasha as his eyes lit up. "Perfect timing. Caduceus has just arrived, and I am willing to bet her would have a few wise words for us."

Yasha glanced over her shoulder and smiled at the lanky, soft-faced student loping his way through the front door. He spotted them and waved with a slow smile of his own, making his way towards them.

"Oh, my apologies," Caleb said hurriedly. "If you don't want to--"

"Oh no, it's fine," Yasha said. "Caduceus is really good at this stuff and I appreciate you sort of sifting out the hard parts with me. Maybe we just talk about the usefulness thing and how you help someone with that?"

Caleb smiled, relieved. "Yes, I think that is excellent."

Caduceus slipped his messenger bag over his head and folded himself onto the bench on Caleb's other side. "Hey Yasha," he greeted. "Beau doing okay?"

Caleb and Yasha did not look at each other. "Oh yeah, yeah," Yasha said. "She's out with Jester for studying German."

Caleb coughed. "Is that what we call that nowadays?" It was not a joke he might have made fifteen minutes ago, but much had changed in those few moments. There was precious little in the way of middle ground for him, and Yasha had stepped very neatly over the boundary from "stranger" to "friend" in the span of but a moment.

Yasha made an equally uncharacteristic move as though to punch him but tapped her fist on his arm instead.

Caleb turned to Caduceus. "Yasha and I were just discussing how being raised to earn your place in a relationship can affect things later in life."

Caduceus nodded. "Ah, so we are talking about Beau. That makes sense."

Yasha shot a horrified look at Caleb, who sighed deeply. "I won't even ask how you got there," he said. "It seems obvious now."

Caduceus looked bemused. "Was I not supposed to know? I'm good at keepin' things to myself, don't worry."

"I know," Yasha and Caleb said in unison.

Caleb looked at Yasha. "You have spoken to Caduceus without Beau as well?"

Yasha shrugged uncomfortably. "We had a history class together and we hang out now and then, you know, he's not really Beau's speed, but we get along great."

"Ah, thanks Yasha. I enjoy our time together too." Caduceus' eyes closed with his big smile.

"Okay, okay," Caleb said. "Sticking to the things Beauregard doesn't mind telling people, which is nothing, how might one raised in such a manner behave in their adult years?"

Caduceus hmmmed. "Well," he began, "I'd say that left unchecked, the belief would cause one to constantly strive to bring something to the table, so to speak, maybe even cause one to feel rejection where there is none if they feel they have not contributed enough to keep their spot."

"That's not an entirely unrelatable feeling," Yasha murmured.

"Agreed," Caleb echoed. Not for the first time, he wondered about Yasha's past. He knew a little about a controlling friend and a past - passed - lover, but much about her was a mystery.

Caduceus nodded. "I think it's possible that most people struggle with the feeling from time to time, but for some it can become almost a personality trait."

"How can you help someone dealing with that?" Yasha asked, leaning in.

"Oh, generally speaking you can point out small things they do naturally, you know, it's not the end of the world to help them feel like they're contributing just by being themselves." He looked at the ceiling. "You could also tell them that projection is a sneaky and dangerous thing and it's important to make sure the things you think your partner wants but won't tell you aren't actually what you want."

Silence.

Yasha blinked.

Caleb's spoke drily. "Generally speaking, ja?"

"Of course." Caduceus raised his thermos and took a sip.

Caleb ran a hand through his hair with a sigh, aiming an apologetic look at Yasha. "Perceptive as always, Caduceus. Thank you."

"Hold on," Yasha said. "B- one could mistake what they want for what their partner wants? How does that happen?"

"Oh, all kinds of ways. People get wedded to the way they see the world without ever meaning to. Even if you do the work to unlearn it, you can find it in small places you didn't even think mattered."

Caleb did not look at Yasha, but he could feel her trying not to laugh at him. That was perfectly fair.

Yasha's phone vibrated gently in her front pocket. She tugged it out to glance at the screen, and Caleb took the chance to look in her direction. He noted the way her features softened almost imperceptibly as she said, "Beau is headed home and wants to know what I want from Panda Express."

Caleb whistled. "Oh they were on Jester's side of town today." Yasha took one hand away from typing a reply to flip him off in a jarringly Beau mannerism that looked wrong on her somehow, like a puppy threatening to tear his arm off. Not that Yasha couldn't, but she did seem very like Beau in that if you got a warning at all, there was probably no threat.

She turned off the screen and got to her feet. "Thank you very much, both of you," she said. "I'm going to start heading back."

Caleb eyed the gentle November rain outside the glass. He might have let her make the trip another time, but now the thought of leaving her to sprint the mile and a half to her apartment galled him as surely as though it were Molly. Well, Molly would probably like it. Fjord, then. "Did you want a ride?" He asked. "It is about time for me to pack up and head home as well."

Yasha hesitated, glancing at the same. "Sure." She smiled sincerely. "Thank you."

"Ja, it is no problem." And it was true.

As he slung his threadbare, bulging backpack over his shoulder and fell in step behind Yasha and Caduceus, Caleb felt a sense of quiet satisfaction spreading through him. Today was a good day. He would go home, he would sleep away the social interaction, pleasant as it was, and then he would see what Molly was up to.

Yeah. Definitely a good day.

"Oh, and Yasha," he said as they approached the lot. "I know Veth's family would be delighted to meet you too if you are free this Wednesday."

Yasha ducked her head, clearly pleased. "I would like that."

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Up Against Me" by LP
> 
> If you listen to LP and you love CR and you read my self-indulgent college AU fic we're best friends now sorry I don't make the rules.


End file.
